“Gentlemen, I think I’ve suffered enough for the morning. Pelles, why don’t you tell my next appointment I’m not coming?”

“Your Majesty is supposed to meet with Baron Meinedes before lunch,” said Sejanus.

“Well, I am not going to,” said the king. “I’m going back to my room.”

Pelles bowed and excused himself. The rest started down the hall. At the first intersection of passages the king spoke again. “Directly back to my room, please, gentlemen.”

Sejanus bowed, offering the king the lead. Eugenides stepped forward. He led the way without hesitation, and Costis wondered how long the king had known that his attendants and his guards led him on a dance of unnecessary twists and turns every time they crossed the palace.

Certainly the king stepped out confidently ahead of his entourage. When he reached the main passage, he crossed it and then turned down a narrower passage that led to an even narrower staircase. The attendants, who might have been worried that their game had been discovered, began to be amused instead. The king climbed three flights without speaking and stepped into a passage lit by small windows near the roof. There were tiny offices on either side. Startled faces looked out from the doorways, and men walking with scrolls and tablets in their hands froze and then bowed as the king passed. Costis had no idea where they were. He didn’t think the attendants knew either. They all followed the king into an office, then through it and out onto a balcony beyond, and stopped.

They were at a dead end, looking out over what had once been an interior courtyard that was now a hall, partially roofed over, with a light well in the center. The roof above their head was supported on rafters that butted into the balcony at their feet.

The royal quarters were somewhere on the far side of the atrium, and there was no way across except to sprout wings and fly.

The attendants smiled.

The king stared angrily at the railing in front of him.

“Perhaps not the most direct route,” he said. The attendants continued to smile as he led them back to the hallways and back past the men still standing with their scrolls and tablets. They bowed again as the king passed. He went down the stairs again, just one flight, turned left and left again to circumnavigate the atrium, and then turned right to reach a passage on the far side. They were again in familiar territory, and even Costis knew which way to turn to reach the king’s rooms.

Even after the detour, they were early and unexpected. The guards in the hall pulled themselves to attention, and the one knocked on the doorway to alert those within of the king’s arrival. The king walked through the doorway and turned on his heel to face his attendants.

“Out,” he said.

“Your Majesty?”

“Out,” said the king. “All of you.” He waved the guards toward the door as well.

“Your Majesty cannot mean—”

“His Majesty does mean . . . and His Majesty has had enough for now, and you may go. Have a holiday. Get a cup of coffee. Chat with your sweethearts. Out.”

“We could never leave you unattended,” Sejanus said in a voice smooth and provoking.

“Your Majesty, it wouldn’t be right,” protested the squad leader, the only one genuinely concerned. He knew his duty, and it did not involve deliberately leaving the king unguarded. Teleus would have his head.

“You can guard me from the hall. The door is the only one into the apartment. You can attend me,” he said to his attendants, “from the hall.”

“Your Majesty, that is unacceptable,” Sejanus said. “We simply cannot leave you all alone.”

The king looked as if he was going to throw the words back in Sejanus’s face. Then his vindictive eye fell on Costis.

“Costis can stay,” he said.

“I think not, Your Majesty.” Sejanus smiled the words, all condescension, but the king stopped him.

“Am I king,” he said flatly, “or shall I call my wife for corroboration?”

He would never admit to the queen that he couldn’t control his own attendants, but none of them, not even Sejanus, could risk calling his bluff.

“Bit in his teeth,” someone muttered as they filtered through the door to the hallway. Lamion was the last one out. He looked back and at the king’s glare hastily pulled the door closed behind him.

Eugenides turned to Costis. “No one walks through that door, Costis. No one comes through any of the doors into this guardroom, is that clear?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Good. Come in here first.”

He walked into the bedroom, and Costis followed to the door.

“Move that chair, please. I want it in front of the window.” It was an armchair, awkward but not heavy. Costis hesitantly lifted it and moved it as the king desired.

“Facing the window or away, Your Majesty?”

“Facing.”

The king sat. Costis stood. The king held out his hand, without looking at Costis, and said, “Take that off for me.” He meant the ring on his finger. It was a heavy seal ring, of solid gold with the seal carved into the face of a ruby.

Costis carefully pulled on the ring, but it was a close fit. He had to hold the wrist with one hand and work the ring off the finger by pulling hard.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said as he tugged.

“Don’t apologize,” said the king. “I can’t imagine that removing seal rings is in your professional training. Unless they give the Guard special training in looting corpses?”

Costis didn’t think it funny. “They do not, Your Majesty.” He pulled hard and the ring came off.

“Leave it on the desk,” said the king, and looked away.

Costis remembered that Teleus worried what damage this young man would do as he started to feel his power. Angry, he stalked to the desk and dropped the ring on its leather top with a thump. The king ignored him. Costis continued out of the room. The king hadn’t said to close the door, so he didn’t. Let him ask, he thought, but the king didn’t. Costis picked a spot where he could stand without a view of the king sitting in front of the window. He stood stiffly at attention, and he waited.

So far as Costis could tell by listening for sounds of shifting weight in the chair, the king didn’t move. Minutes ticked past. There was no sound from the bedroom. The king had probably decided to take a nap.

“Costis,” he said at last. “Come move the chair back. Then I suppose you had better let the lapdogs back in.”

In spite of himself, Costis was amused at the image of the king’s elegant courtier attendants as a pack of poorly trained house dogs.

Later, in his own quarters, as he was getting ready for bed, Costis wondered who put the king’s seal ring back on and if the attendants wondered how he got it off. He looked at his own left hand, where he wore a small copper ring with a seal on it of Miras, the soldier’s patron god of light and arrows. As a trainee, Costis had joined the Miras cult with his friends. They each wore the copper ring, though it turned their fingers green.

Tentatively he pushed at the ring with his thumb, trying to remove it without using his right hand. He hooked it on the edge of the tabletop to no effect. Finally he put his finger in his mouth and worked it off with his teeth. He spat the ring into his palm and dropped it onto the table, where it sat reflecting the candlelight. Costis shuddered as if someone had walked over his grave. He put the ring back on his finger and went to bed, trying to think of other things.